MAP181: The Circle of Death (Rabbit's All-comers Mapping Project 2023)

MAP181: The Circle of Death is the one hundred eighty-first map of Rabbit's All-comers Mapping Project 2023. It was designed by ONETAPPYBOI and uses the music track "Into the Beast's Belly" by L.A. Sieben.

Essentials
This level consists of one arena that gets enlarged and refilled with enemies with every new wave. To progress to the next wave, all enemies in the previous one have to be killed.

The first wave consists of several demons and imps and is triggered by picking up the super shotgun on the podium in the northern part of the starting area. The revealed area also contains a box of shotgun shells, a stimpack, and some minor ammunition pickups. Killing all enemies will spawn a chaingun, which will trigger the second wave once picked up.

The second wave consists of two pain elementals in the northern part of the arena, as well as zombiemen, shotgunners and chaingunners from all other directions. The pain elementals are the top priority here due to them quickly filling up the relatively small arena with lost souls, so stunlocking them with the newly acquired chaingun should be the first thing you do. The hitscanners have a tendency to infight with each other, allowing you to focus on the pain elementals. After they are dealt with, take care of the surviving hitscanners while picking up the stimpacks and ammunition scattered around the arena. Killing all enemies will spawn a rocket launcher, which will trigger the third wave once picked up.

The third wave consists of two arch-viles spawning in the starting area, and a horde of demons and spectres being unleashed at the outer edges of the arena. Here, you are at a constant danger of encirclement by pinkies, so the first priority should be killing some of them with the rocket launcher and moving to the outermost edge of the arena, where there is plenty of cover from the arch-viles. There, you can also find four berserk packs, enabling you to safe ammo by punching out the pinkies. After ensuring you will not be surrounded, you can start attempting to kill the arch-viles. That said, there will be plenty of demons blocking your rockets, so it may take a fair amount of shots to hit the arch-viles. If you are playing in the default compatibility mode, you may also kill the arch-viles first, and then jump on top of demons to escape encirclement, however, this is a much more dangerous strategy. Killing all enemies will spawn a backpack, which will trigger the fourth wave once picked up.

The fourth wave consists of two spiderdemons, several cacodemons, and a horde of imps. Due to their high damage potential, the spiderdemons should be made to infight with the cacodemons, and then killed with the super shotgun while they are distracted. The imps may get in the way of your shots, so be prepared to switch to the rocket launcher to clear some space. After both spiderdemons are down, finish off the surviving cacodemons and imps. Killing all enemies will spawn a plasma gun, which will trigger the fifth wave once picked up.

The fifth wave consists of two cyberdemons spawning in the starting area, and revenants, chaingunners and arachnotrons spawning at the outer edges of the arena. The highest priority targets here are the chaingunners due to their high damage potential, even at long ranges; fortunately, they are quite prone to infighting. After the chaingunners are dealt with, the next priority targets should be the arachnotrons, which take up a most of the space at the outermost edges of the arena. This is due to the fact that, even though the arena gets physically larger, the outermost section of it is unusable due to it being flooded, which slows you down, and, consequently, makes dodging projectiles nearly impossible. After the arachnotrons are all dead, target the revenants. The cyberdemons should be the last to be killed since they are quite useful assets due to their tendency to infight and killing a lot of enemies in the process. Killing all enemies will spawn a BFG9000, which will trigger the sixth and final wave once picked up.

The sixth wave consists of four arch-viles spawning in the starting area, revenants spawning on the tops of blocks in the middle ring, and Hell knights and pain elementals spawning at the outermost edges of the arena. The newly acquired BFG should be immediately used to quickly kill the arch-viles before they are able to revive anything, and, after that, should be used to kill the pain elementals to prevent them from filling the arena with lost souls. When you run out of cells, go to the outermost edge of the arena—there, you may find a total of 1200 cells, as well as two megaspheres. Due to the high amount of revenants found in this wave, it is important to constantly stay on the move, as stopping even for a bit will almost certainly get you hit with several guided missiles, potentially killing you instantly.

After all enemies are defeated, the wall in front of the exit teleporter will lower, allowing you to exit the level.

Other points of interest
In the starting area, there is a stack of crates with a medikit and a green armor initially placed on them. Items will occasionally spawn here as you progress through the level, so make sure to revisit the area after each wave to get some extra health and ammo.

Secrets
There are no official secrets on this map.

Bugs
The scripting of this level does not account for lost souls spawned by pain elementals, which means it is not necessary to kill them to advance to the next wave or exit the level.

Speedrunning
As this level does not contain official secrets, the NM 100S category is redundant.

Current records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The (absence of) data was last verified in its entirety on September 11, 2023.

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level:

Trivia
The name of the level is a reference to MAP11 of Doom 2.